Hello all, I'm BeckaP. A friend introduced me to the Myst games about six months ago, and I love them! Books have always been my thing, so Books that link to Ages are just that much more awesome. (And I have read the Myst trilogy )

I was excited to find that one could actually create ages! I am a novice computer programmer and have done just a bit of 3d modeling. While I don't think I have enough experience to create an entire age myself, I'd like to jump in help wherever I can. I'm not exactly sure how to get started with age creation though, so if anybody could point me to a good place to start, I'd be most grateful!

Hello! I'm thepieddragon, and I'm just kind-of a humble newbie who stumbled onto this and have no idea what's going on.

Well, okay that's not really true. I've been a huge fan of the Myst series for a long time, and have played through Uru: Complete Chronicles a few times as well. What I'm unfamiliar with (mostly) is the online portion, which I wasn't aware existed until a couple weeks ago. You see, I had always thought Cyan pulled the plug on the online part ages (no pun intended) ago, before I actually got around to playing the series at an age where I could understand the puzzles, and had no idea that they not only rebooted the servers years later, but open-sourced the engine partially so others could make their own instances. So I'm almost all of MOUL's life behind and way out of the loop.

While I have some rudimentary knowledge from scavenging for info (I know the MOULa exclusive stuff, the changes to PoTS, a few pieces of history, some currently-running shards, etc), and I understand the basic differences between different shards, I really don't know what's going on in the grand scheme of things. Can anybody maybe fill me in on the current state of Uru and it's community as it stands? Perhaps what I should try out, or avoid (outside of the obvious 'don't be evil')? Honestly I just don't want to sound like an idiot.

Otherwise, I'm just a tech nerd and gamer who enjoys tinkering with PCs and the like, and I've been looking into maybe dabbling in age creation if I can work out the tools, so hopefully that can be a thing that happens.

Welcome Pykan't! Since you just created your forum account, our system hasn't sync'd you over to the game server yet. Logging out and back in to the forum should do the trick, and let you become Pykan!

Username's Drewsko. I'm about a decade-long follower of the Myst saga and D'ni mythology, though it's sometimes been an on/off again thing. Own every game (twice over at this point once the 25th collector's set ships) and a basket full of related merchandise, plus my own crafts projects of a Riven dagger and Myst/Relto linking books. I'm also very creative in written and artistic en-devours, so a Guild like this sounds like a good fit for me. Most of my game tinkering dates back to fiddling with the Source engine, so I dunno if I could "write" my own age yet, but we'll see.

If there's one thing that defines my intrigue with the series, it's my appreciation for its titular age, Myst Island. Seeing it in URU is always a fun time, and when I first stumbled upon Drizzle it made me a very happy boy being able to walk around the island from the Myst V map, even in its decayed and abandoned state. My tinkering with the shards outside of MOULa is primarily motivated by wanting to see it again with my Uru avatar(s), so I'm trying to get Dream Island working for that regard, and keeping an eye out to see if the Gehn Shard and maybe, possibly, one day MOULa could give access to it too.

I've been a fan of Myst since the early 2000s. I adore the series but one thing that i regret is missing out on Uru during it's "heyday" as I only had a satellite connection which the game did not like. Since then I've tried it out a little since Cyan started hosting it themselves, but I always feel the pull to return. Right now I am feeling it again and I'm wondering if the Gehn Shard is the place to do that? At the risk of sounding stupid, I really don't understand really well what Gehn and the various Shards are. I understand they are fan-made, but is Gehn a re-make of the original Uru Live?

I'd love to be able to get back to the cavern and explore with others, but I must admit I've been out of the loop in regards to the Uru community so I'm not really sure where things stand. Still, keen to jump in.

If all you want is to socialize, then the official Myst Online is the place to go, as it has more people (depending on the hour - just make sure you're visiting a public instance...). There isn't new content on it, but at least it's not dead.

Fanmade Shards are more interesting if you want new content, but there are less people there. These are the two main you should remember:- Gehn Shard is an improved version of Uru Live, with more bugfixes, and a few quality Ages made by the fans. There obviously won't be as many people there as in Uru Live, but if you want some new content in a version of the game that looks very much like Uru Live it's a good place to be.- And then there is Deep Island (DI for short), which runs on a modified installation of Path of the Shell / Complete Chronicles. It's older, looks like a Uru Live / CC hybrid, but has the more content out of any Shard. Most notably, it has something like 130 Fan-Ages (not all are pretty but you can have a fun time exploring them). And it has a few more features, such as the ability to explore Myst V Ages with your Uru avatar, and a working Gahreesen Wall. On the flip side I think it's quite hard to find someone playing on it.

The Gehn Shard, and DI, sound pretty cool so I'll check both out. While it'd be great to share my exploration with others, being from Australia originally I'm kind of used to not being around with lots of explorers due to time difference. However, I'm in the UK now and I have noticed there is the odd meet up of UK fans, so that's cool.

There is a group that meets at "The Meeting Place" Neighborhood every Sunday at 8pm UK time our group has its origins in the Admin error we are multi national based in Europe Canada and the US and we have had a couple of Real Life meets over the years.

Among our members we have Age Builders, Bug fixers and long term Cavern Explorers

Usually it is just chat and we occasionally get new visitors who we are able to help with their game problems in a spoiler free method.